Posts Tagged ‘Haredi’

A 10-year-old Brooklyn Haredi girl was killed and her mother, nine months pregnant, was injured when they were hit by a minivan while crossing the street in the Borough Park neighborhood.

The mother, Sarah Friedman, was taken to the hospital, where she delivered a healthy baby girl — her fifth child — on Tuesday night. She reportedly was in an induced coma and did not know as of Wednesday afternoon that her daughter Blima had died. The funeral was held Wednesday.

Friedman and Blima were pinned under the van. The mother reportedly called continually to her daughter and to passers-by to see how Blima was doing, according to local news reports.

The vehicle was driven by Bilal Ghumman, 22, an employee of a nearby valet service who had taken the car without the owner’s consent. A Breathalyzer test administered at the scene showed no alcohol in his system, police said.

Ghumman was charged with the unauthorized use of a vehicle without the owner’s consent and given a violation on an active warrant for a marijuana offense, the police said, according to newspaper reports.

It is the second tragedy to affect the family in recent years. During Hanukkah 2009, a fire broke out in the family’s home, severely burning a younger daughter who nearly died. Blima escaped the blaze.,

Update: The doctors at Shaarei Tzezek will not be releasing Yehudah Glick on Sunday as previously planned. On Friday, the doctors decided to run some additional medical treatments on him.

Shaarei Tzedek Hospital officials said that Rabbi Yehuda Glick will be able to go home Sunday following his miraculous recovery from gunshot wounds at the hands of a Jerusalem Arab who tried to assassinate him last month.

The chief rabbis of Jerusalem and of Israel visited Glick this past week, challenging themselves in the art of diplomacy considering their interpretation of Jewish law that Jews are prohibited from visiting – let alone praying – on the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Glick is the leading activist to encourage Jews to listen to the rulings of a growing number of national religious rabbis who have stated there is no problem with visiting certain areas of the site that covers the ruins of the First and Second Temples.

All rabbis agree that it is forbidden to walk in certain area, such as where the Holy of Holies once stood and where only the High Priest was allowed to enter once a year, on Yom Kippur.

Jerusalem Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Aryeh Stern visited Glick in Thursday. Despite his opposition to Jews visiting the Temple Mount, he tactfully said, “It is with the help of God that He wants your words, and your intentions are in the name of God, and that is most important.”

Glick to told Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau earlier this week that the Jerusalem Arab who shot him first told him, “I am sorry. But you are an enemy of Al Aqsa” and then pumped four bullets into his chest, one of them puncturing a lung.

It is not surprising that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef did not visit Glick. Rabbi Yosef last week was not satisfied with reiterating the Haredi stand that Jews aren’t allowed to visit the Temple Mount. He went to the extreme of disgracing himself by labeling rabbis who permit visits as “fourth-rate” rabbis.

Doctors at Shaarei Tzedek will hold a press conference on Sunday before Glick goes home to continue his recovery, which he will not consider complete until he returns to the Temple Mount. Of courses, no one will allow him to pray there because Muslims are afraid that God may hear his prayers,

“Find something wrong with it — find it!” a glowing Berger exclaims Monday as he holds his treasure: a bumpy, lemon-like fruit.

In open-air markets and on tables unfolded on sidewalks in Jewish communities throughout the world, many Jews preparing for Sukkot look for lovely etrogim, the fruit that constitutes the centerpiece of the biblically mandated four species to be blessed during the weeklong holiday.

Many celebrants will take the basic etrogim commonly sold by synagogues, Jewish schools and shops for about $50 for a set that also includes a lulav, myrtle and willow.

Then there are men like Berger, who think nothing of dropping hundreds of dollars on an especially beautiful etrog, which they believe enhances their fulfillment of the mitzvah.

No sooner does Yom Kippur end than such customers seek out Dahan, 38, a resident of Jaffa who owns three hotels in Tel Aviv but has trekked to New York City the past 15 autumns to hawk his high-end etrogim. They are rippled and slightly smooth, hefty and slim, shiny in hue and subdued — in etrog selection, as in life, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Above all, though, Dahan’s etrogim are symmetrical and close to blemish-free — and are pure, ungrafted.

All come from the 200 trees on a half-acre plot of land Dahan leases in Dumdir, a village in southern Morocco, his parents’ homeland. Dahan visits four times a year to monitor their growth and consult with his one full-time employee.

His last visit there preceded Rosh Hashanah, when Dahan selected the crop’s 2,000 best. In a Moroccan hotel room, he categorized the 200 most pristine specimens promising top dollar, examining each for texture, shape and, above all, the slightest of flaws.

He’s not alone catering to the market in Williamsburg, where the primarily Hasidic community is dominated by the Satmar sect, with smaller pockets of Bobov and Vizhnitz. In the weeks before Sukkot, several other storefronts and trailers pop up in the neighborhood, with dealers and growers offering premium etrogim from Israel and Italy, along with Morocco.

Some of the merchants, like Dahan, also market to the haredi Orthodox community in Monsey, a town northwest of New York City.

In the trailer, Berger slides his eyeglasses down near the tip of his nose, the better to inspect the etrog he’s grasping. He takes a cotton swab from a box and dabs at the surface surrounding the pitom, as the stem is known, trying to discern if the pinhead-sized speck he spots is merely a wayward dirt particle or a blemish.

Ten minutes into the inspection, Berger phones his rabbi, detailing his observations in Yiddish. He hangs up, calls again, then returns the etrog to a foam-lined box that he sets aside on a table.

This one is smaller than many others displayed, and the pitom is angled slightly, but Berger is smitten.

“It’s clean — perfectly clean. For me, that’s the most important,” Berger pronounces of the $200 etrog that he calls “a bargain.”

He’ll also take the one he’d reserved earlier — and two more besides for his brothers. He leaves a $200 deposit for the four etrogim, which he takes away for his brothers to examine.

Six blocks down Lee Street, Dahan sits in a vacant storefront, his other temporary outpost in Williamsburg. Two tables host four reading lamps to help customers scrutinize the merchandise. A man who inspects for 45 minutes leaves without purchasing.

A New York attorney claimed that some El Al Airlines’ policies may violate U.S. law in the wake of delays on flights because Haredi men refused to sit next to women.

Iris Richman, who holds the title of rabbi, posted on the Facebook page of Jewish Voices Together, a citation of federal law that states, “An air carrier or foreign air carrier may not subject a person in air transportation to discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or ancestry.”

Richman told Haaretz that she called the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division and was informed that the department was “willing to investigate any situation where any employee of a carrier, i.e steward/ess participated in asking someone to change a seat because of their gender.”

Her post followed two days after the launch of an online petition calling on El Al to provide a small section of gender-segregated seats for an extra fee. More than 3,000 people have signed the petition, which also charges that the Israeli airline permits “female passengers to be bullied, harassed and intimidated into switching seats which they rightfully paid for and were assigned to.”

El Al maintains that it does not discriminate against passengers. An airline spokeswoman told Haaretz, “Our policy in general is to try to accommodate any customer request.”

Search warrants unsealed in Quebec allege that the Haredi Lev Tahor sect trafficked in human cargo and committed other abuses.

The documents also reveal that Interpol and Israel helped build the criminal case against the group before its 250 members fled to Guatemala in March with leader Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans.

The list of charges in the warrant issued in January include detailed allegations by former Lev Tahor member, including Helbrans’ own brother Nathan, of physical force, use of psychotropic drugs, forced marriage of juveniles and sexual assault, according to Canadian reports.

Helbrans founded Lev Tahor in Israel in the late 1980s and ran it both there and in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was convicted of kidnapping, and then for a decade near Montreal.

Canada granted him asylum in 2003 based on his claimed fear of being persecuted if sent back to Israel.

In November, the group fled Quebec for the adjacent province of Ontario, and four months later for Guatemala in the wake of the ongoing investigation by youth protection officials and other authorities.

This month, Lev Tahor left the village of San Juan la Laguna for the Guatemala City capita amid reports of rising tensions with local Catholics.

The remaining 30 Lev Tahor members who had remained in Canada also reportedly left Ontario for Guatemala this month to reunite with the rest of the sect.

Members of the controversial Haredi sect Lev Tahor left a Guatemalan village after religiously tainted disputes with its Roman Catholic Mayan residents.

Over 200 members of the community began leaving Thursday after local leaders said they would cut services to Lev Tahor members.

The move is one of many recent disruptions for the group, which has been targeted with child abuse allegations in Canada.

Lev Tahor had maintained a small presence in San Juan La Laguna, a village about 90 miles west of Guatemala City, for about six years, but it expanded considerably in March after a contingent arrived complaining of persecution by Canadian authorities.

Tensions appear to have flared after the newcomers arrived, and leaders of the village told news agencies that the group sought to impose its practices on the indigenous peoples.

Miguel Vasquez Cholotio, a member of the elders’ council, told Reuters the sect members refused to greet or have physical contact with anyone outside their community.

“We felt intimidated by them in the streets. We thought they wanted to change our religion and customs,” he said. Vasquez Cholotio told AFP that the villagers “need to conserve and preserve our culture.”

Uriel Goldman, a spokesman for Lev Tahor, told Reuters that the group had friendly relations with the locals, and was the victim of charges by a minority among the village’s leaders. He said the group would seek another site in Guatemala to settle.